Transcript of the oral history of Eva Rutledge. Click here to stream the audio for this oral history.
Mrs. Rutland's oral history was recorded March 28, 2009, at her home in Curtis Park, Sacramento, California. She was born in 1917 in Atlanta, Georgia. Her grandfather was a former slave who opened a shoe shop in Atlanta after the Civil War, and she grew up in the house he built. She moved to Sacramento in 1952 with her husband, Bill, who had been hired to work at McClellan Air Force Base. Mrs. Rutland was an accomplished author and is most widely known for her first book, The Trouble with Being a Mama: A Negro Mother on the Anxieties and Joys of Bringing Up a Family, published in 1964 (re-published in 2007 as When We Were Colored: A Mother’s Story). In it she illuminates her and her family's experiences dealing with racism and integration, combined with typical adolescent anxieties. She died in Sacramento in 2012. Topics in this interview include Mrs. Rutland's family history, experiences growing up in Atlanta in the 1920s and 1930s, her marriage, her children and their education and experiences in Sacramento, integration, and her career as an author.
Interview and transcription by Bryanna M. Ryan.
Accession number: 2010/030
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